Monday, March 15, 2021

Mouth Numbingly Delicious: 2006 Wistaria Tai He Maocha

This interesting puerh piqued my interest as not much is written about this Wistaria production.  It turns out that there is both a 2005 & 2006 cake and maocha options for the Taihe pressings.  This 2006 Wistaria Tai He Maocha goes for approx  $26.60 for 50g or $0.53/g.

Dry leaves smell of very dry woody odours with a fine piercing candy floral high noted lingering odour.

The first infusion has a very pungent and spicy quick moving tingling tongue taste and feel.  The tonguefeeling is numbing and the taste pungent and deep woody and medicinal.  The taste is very pungent and alive, with some juicy fruitiness, lots of cooling and warming complex pungency as well as a mild bitterness that offers an extraordinarily complex presentation.  The Qi is immediately calm in the body and hypnotic in the mind.  There is a long complex spicy and cooling with some woody and sweetness to finish.

The second infusion has a strong pungent onset with a deep reverberation numbness in the mouth.  There is dry woody, composting leaf, caramel, floral, camphor…. This puerh reminds me of some of the old school very camphor tasting cakes.  That is the direction of aging on this one and I think it will be very nice.  The complex taste hits all at once and has a hypnotic feeling to it.  The mouthfeeeing is so numbing and the taste so vibrantly complex pungent. 

The third infusion is left to cool and is a deeply pungent sweet caramel woody taste.  The tastes flood in all at once and a long pungency is overwhelmingly dominant as is a numbing mouth sensation.



The fourth infusion has a buttery pungent fruity note with more of a mild flavor overall.  There is still woody, pungency, numbing, camphor, sweet fruity, caramel, leaf.  Still complex but not as strong.  Nice focusing and hypnotic Qi.



The fifth infusion spicy, pungent, fruity, has a brilliant wine grape taste that is common in aged maocha.  Long complex lingering sweet pungent aftertaste.  This infusions has a lot of fruity tastes.  Nice hypno-Qi.

The sixth infusion has a nice coco raison woody, fruity almost wine like grape taste.  Long wine like sweetness.  These later infusions are not as tongue numbing, and not as pungent or woody but getting more complexly sweet.  Nice Qi.  Feels good a bit light in the shoulder blades.

The seventh infusion has a woody wine like grape with a deep throaty pungency and sweet brown sugar aftertaste.  The aftertaste is really long and brown sugar sweet.  The Qi makes me feel very happy and with light arms.  Very nice.

The eighth infusion has a woody incense still floral even peachy taste to it.  There is a bit of wine notes and a deeper cooling pungency.  This infusion is also sweeter.  As the day goes, the happy energy continues.  My body feels slightly light… I feel good.

The ninth infusion starts woody incense but with an emerging sweet bread taste.  There is a strong piercing pungency to it.  It has a long lingering taste in a soft but mild numbing mouthfeeling. 

10th has a mellow woody onset with a pungency that is slower to develop but lingers deep in the throat and on the aftertaste with many fruity pear and peach and almost wine like sweet tastes.

11th has a more woody camphor pungent taste.  The taste is still quite sweet in the aftertaste- fruity, sweet bread, brown sugar.

12th has a bit more dry woodiness, less pungent and sweet but still much the same with a deep relaxing qi.  Very good durability for maocha of this age.

I run out of time in a day.

The next day I do a long steep and it pushes out a mainly caramel and bitter almost salty woody taste.  The caramel taste is long and fulfilling it reaches in the deeper throat and lingers in the aftertaste.  The bitterness also goes long throughout the profile.  There is even a metallic taste left in the mouth minutes later.

Nice blended very dynamic and energizing experience. I liked it a lot.  The strongest point is the vibrantly simulating numbing mouthfeeling which deeps the experience with a livening complex taste, Qi, and bodyfeeling.  The end result is a party in the body and all the senses are invited.




Steepster Tasting Notes

Peace

1 comment:

  1. Had this maocha from Wistaria recently and it had a very musty storage flavor and was cloudy for several steeps. I wonder if yours was in a different storage warehouse. I'm curious to try it from a cake. Do you know if the cake material is similar?

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